13 THE ROLETTS- You say yeah (1970) (CD only)

In the late 1960s, Carinthia, Austria’s Southernmost province, still had an air of Small Town 1950s about it: “Commercial alpine folk music groups from our region, like Die Fidelen Lavantthaler, already had record deals with majors like CBS. But this was unthinkable for a Beat band”, Bluesrock veteran Dieter Themel describes the lack of infrastructure. The fact that the local underground scene was documented on records at all owes to the visionary initiative of producer Gerd Kernmayer, who saw an opportunity to fill a market niche, came up an impressive-sounding name (Cosmos), and thus founded Carinthia’s first pop label.

The Roletts, a combo from St. Veit that had been cutting their teeth on quite a number of Five-O’-Clock Tea Dances since 1965, were the ambitious Indie label’s first recording artists. The original composition “You say yeah”, which was released as an A side for their second single in 1970, is a captivating excercise in penetrating fuzz guitars, evocative lyrics with a message, and charmingly eccentric Austro-English. The band is not only an important discovery for regional musical history, but also shows that the era of Beatles and Stones imitations was slowly coming to an end even in the most remote corners of the country. Well done!